"I watched him speak for a
while, then I went to a biology class, then back
to watch him speak some more," Jacobs says.
"Then I went to dinner, then came back and
he was still talking. Then to a rehearsal and
back, and the place was even more packed, with
people hanging out of windows. Here was a little
man in a dark suit. He'd talk for 20 minutes with
his eyes closed, and you'd wonder what he was
talking about and then suddenly you would realize
you had hopped on the train and were with him."

Jacobs didn't know it then, but
he has never really gotten off the train. Next
week, the Rep premieres Jacobs' "R. Buckminster
Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe,"
a one-man show performed by Ron Campbell and based
on the life work and writings of the Renaissance
man people still call "Bucky."

Fuller's comprehensive approach
to knowledge "influenced me as much as anything,
as opposed to his specific ideas. Some of his
ideas were so strange I couldn't wrap my head
around them," Jacobs said.

Still, Fuller's ideas resonated
with Jacobs all those years he performed with
Magique, a street theater group, then acted, wrote
and directed for the Rep. Jacobs considered writing
a one-man show about Fuller to perform himself.

Then in 1995, GENI (the San Diego-based
Global Energy Network International, directed
by Peter Meisen) approached Jacobs to help find
a theater and stage an event for the centennial
of Fuller's birth.

Around the same time, the multitalented
Campbell, a great physical comic, came into the
picture.

"Ron was doing a lot of work
at Rep, and I began to see a lot o f rhythmic
parallels. Ron is very physical ... rhythmically
clear, aggressively curious. So around that time,
I began thinking of building the piece around
Ron's skills."

Fuller coined the term "Spaceship
Earth" (among others), and promulgated the
idea that individuals are responsible for the
planet, and thus should "Think globally,
act locally."

Although he is best-known as the
creator of the geodesic dome - the honeycomb sphere
of triangular parts - Fuller also imagined a new
math system, an end to world hunger, and streamlined,
energy-efficient auto, the Dymaxion.

"The most interesting thing
about him in the 60's was that he cut across problems
differently from anyone else. He was really forcing
people to rethink how they perceived and organized
knowledge. He brought people into one room who
would not be spending time together ordinarily:
the military with anti-military people, hippies,
artists, and scientists."

Fuller's daughter, Allegra Snyder,
a dance ethnologist and retired chair of the dance
department at UCLA, said her father's small (5-foot-5)
jolly physical appearance was deceiving: "
When he talked, he became so impassioned that
a kind of energy radiated from him. I drew people
to him."

And boy, could Bucky talk.

His most famous appearance came
in front of a video camera in 1975. HE began reciting
all he knew about his life, work and human history.
Forty-three hours later, he stopped, having never
repeated himself.

To create "History (and Mystery),"
Jacobs said he imagined he was structures "a
really interesting poetry reading, one that had
more of a through-line. How do I get really contrasting
kinds of language rhetoric, and music? It is a
bit of a collage, yet to some degree there is
almost a three-act structure hidden. I kept trying
to expand it out from his roots in his family
into what Freud called the problems of love and
work."

Fuller was born to the old and distinguished
New England family that produced Margaret Fuller,
who helped publish the works of Emerson. Buckminster
Fuller, however, got off to a shaky start. Expelled
twice from Harvard, he worked in a Canadian machinery
factory. He married Anne Hewlett, a union that
lasted 66 years until they died, two days apart
in 1983.

Jacobs' script, based mostly on
Fuller's voluminous writing, deals at length with
the life-changing event: the death of their 4-year-old
daughter, Alexandra, in 1922, a grief that plunged
him into an alcoholic stupor, cost him his job,
and nearly his life.

It was then that Fuller realized
his life belonged to the universe, not to himself.
"Like Gandhi," Jacob says, " Bucky
decided to turn his life into an experiment to
see if he could live by his principles."
Chief among those was the notion that individuals
can actually affect global change.

Campbell will illustrate some of
Bucky's ideas by manipulating objects - the geometric
shapes that Fuller saw as central of the universe,
shapes that transform into one another in a reflection
of what he saw as the "pumping action"
of the cosmos.

Famed British designer Annie Smart
is designing the show, which will have new music
by Luis Perez.

We're not doing an impersonation
of Bucky. The family was relieved to hear we weren't
doing that. Ron has a phenomenal amount of energy
and drive, which is very parallel to what Fuller
had. People may think they're seeing the force
of his mind and energy on stage. But it's not
about impersonation; it's about trying to make
the intentions of his life come alive."

Fuller had the capacity to help
people see how much more possibility there was
to life. "What was invigorating about that
was not that you were made to feel ignorant, but
you were made to feel that innate curiosity of
a child."

The title of his show came from
Snyder, who was corrected Jacobs when he asked
if Fuller was writing the history of the universe:
"The history and the mystery of the universe,"
the daughter of the genius said.

And is the writer-director satisfied
with the show.

"Yeah, I am," Jacobs said, "
although the whole attempt is somewhat presumptuous in a
way, but I think that's how Bucky wanted people to be."